Plastic Surgeon ‘Devastated’ By ‘Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt’ Character Found Dead

When you are a known quantity, a famous face or maybe a guy well known for working on famous faces, you open yourself up to parody. That’s the number one rule of comedy: nothing and no one is off limits. And yet the news that infamous “celebrity dermatologist” Dr. Fredric Brandt has passed away so shortly after being ruthlessly (and let’s be brutally honest here, hilariously) mocked on Netflix’s Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt is sad news ... especially since it is now being implied that the show’s take on him may have contributed to his death.

Right now, this is all a bunch of hearsay and unconfirmed reports (Gawker has gathered all of the related information), but Brandt was recently found dead in his Miami home shortly after he was reportedly “devastated” and depressed by the version of him played by Martin Short on Netflix’s new comedy series. The implication is that Short’s take on Brandt, who was famous for testing his anti-aging techniques on himself, may have contributed to his depression, which may have contributed to his death.

Although he has a different name, there is absolutely no doubt that Short’s character, with his bleached blonde hair and face so immobile that he’s incomprehensible, was inspired by Brandt. The man was well-known and was a truly strange character before Short cranked his eccentricities up to 11. He already seemed like someone whipped up in the writer’s room of a goofy sitcom long before he inspired a character on a goofy sitcom. We can’t help but feel torn. We would never say that a TV show and a comedian aren’t allowed to mock a public figure, but we also feel terrible for Brandt and the people who knew him. After all, behind every impersonation of a famous person is, well, a person.

Brandt’s work will live on in the waxy, slightly immobile faces of his many celebrity clients.